Shadow Over Edmund Street by Suzanne Frankham (read a book .TXT) 📕

way down the phone lines had reduced to a smoulder. When Alex greeted her at the door he was pleased to discover his heart didn’t turn cartwheels. It had for a long time, holding out hope she would come back and sew up the ripped and shredded bits. Make his life whole again. He accepted there was no chance anymore. His heart, he was pleased to acknowledge, gave a tiny little bump. The sort it gave when he saw Dog. It was in fine shape. Especially since he was close to getting his girls back. To lose his wife had been bad enough, but to lose his girls had caused unbearable pain.

‘Alex,’ she said in greeting.

He found her attractive, alluring. A woman in her forties, with the kind of look only money can provide. The perfect white teeth, the subtle highlights in her red-gold hair a work of art, the russet jacket nipped in at her tiny waist, her body toned and athletic, her skin soft and supple. He showed her in and couldn’t help himself. He peeked out the window to see which car she was driving. There had been a new car every year and he was surprised to see she was driving the same Mercedes as last time he saw her. It must be two, perhaps even three, years old by now. He thought about it for a moment, wondered what it meant. She had left him for money, no doubt. She might have claimed it was because of his job, but they both knew that had not been the cause.

‘Welcome, Bridget,’ he said, pleased his voice was steady. ‘I’ll make you a drink.’

‘Water, thank you. Fizzy.’ She turned towards Clare who was standing, watching. Dog was pressed hard against her legs.

‘Mum,’ said Clare, one hand on the dog’s head. Not, Hello, Mum. Or, Hey, Mum, it’s great to see you.

Mum. A statement. No emotion.

Good on you, thought Alex. Good on you, little sparrow.

‘Clare, darling. What a fuss you’ve caused. I’ve been in an absolute tizz.’

‘Have you, Mum?’ asked Clare, still and steady. ‘Why?’

Alex, who had turned away to go to the kitchen, couldn’t stop his smile. Gemma, who had walked into the room, saw it. She gave him a hug. ‘It’s going to be alright. She’s learnt to stick up for herself,’ she whispered.

Alex nodded, glanced over, saw Bridget watching them. He registered the surprise on her face.

‘Well,’ Bridget said, her voice sounding like a spoilt child who had lost her favourite toy, ‘Clare and Gemma. Tell me about it. Whatever has been happening?’

* It was easy from then on. Bridget conceded the first round but extracted a promise from Alex he would never let the girls walk home alone at night. She wasn’t having her girls walk past the homeless shelter and the druggies who littered the streets in his neighbourhood. Alex had looked at the girls and they’d shrugged. If it brought them peace, so be it. She had left then, to drive back to her rich husband.

The girls relaxed, sat on the sofa with the dog stretched out between them, his head resting on Clare’s lap, and put on a movie about a cohort of tall pale men dressed in black who morphed into vampires. Alex, freed by mutual consent from the need to stay and watch, poured a large glass of cabernet sauvignon, tucked the half-empty bottle under his arm and wandered outside.

The art deco balcony, with its panoramic view of the city had taken his breath away the first time he saw the apartment. Now, with darkness closing in and the city lights flicking on, he could feel the magic of the night transform the city. He sat, glass in hand, with images of Bridget scrolling through his mind like a slide show.

He hadn’t realised what it would mean to marry someone who came from a rich family. She had been used to the best of everything. The best clothes, new cars, overseas holidays. He hadn’t been able to provide them. Instead, he had bought an old Victorian weatherboard villa, a traditional ‘renovator’s delight’, and with his father’s help had spent every spare moment doing it up so she had a beautiful home. It had been their last big project together, father and son, before his father had returned home one day with a bad headache. Within a week he was dead from a brain aneurism.

Alex loved the place. A memorial to his father. Bridget did too. She had appreciated all the hard work. But she needed more. Her daddy had provided the extras—new cars, designer clothes, shoes, handbags, holidays skiing in France, Canada, America or wherever took her fancy. Alex had done his best not to feel squashed by it.

When Bridget’s father died in a car accident, the lie had unravelled. The mountain of debt loaded on the farm, mortgaged to the hilt, the money trailed down ski resorts around the world, burnt up in fast cars and the latest fashions. Alex had never said anything to Bridget, but the investigating officers suspected the car crash on a lonely stretch of back road had been deliberate. There were signs the car had accelerated into a tree, although the death was officially deemed an accident.

For a while Bridget had been quiet. Her enthusiasm for life dimmed, almost extinguished. Then she left him. For Jeff, her first boyfriend. The one whose family owned the property next to her father’s. The one who took over supplying the things her daddy had provided, year after year. Alex wondered if Bridget had spent her way through another man’s fortune, forced to drive a three-year-old Mercedes. Maybe that was why she hadn’t put up much of a fight over the girls leaving the hostel. Money needed to be saved.

He took another sip of his wine, topped up his glass and decided, then and there that Bridget’s days of calling the shots were over. The girls were adults and from now on he would fight. She could call